You may hear this term “brand equity” a lot. But, what does it really mean? Brand equity is defined as your customer’s perception of the brand name. This is often tied to just your brand and not the actual product or service you provide. For example, if you hear that a new product is being rolled out by Google versus ABC Electronics, who are you more likely to buy from? Google has built a successful brand that is almost synonymous with innovation and convenience. Without even knowing what the new product is, the brand name Google starts to conjure up certain feelings that may subconsciously make you more willing to buy from them than an unheard of competitor. This power in brand equity is something you want to strive for. Then the question becomes, “how do I build up brand equity?” The easiest answer is: your website.
Your website can give you a lot of great insight into how much brand equity you have in your industry. The key is to really dive deep into your website’s metrics and study how your customers arrive at your website and, more importantly, how they interact with your website’s content. Here’s what you can do today to improve your brand equity.
Step 1: Look at your website traffic
If you have Google Analytics installed on your website’s backend, you will be able to see the referring source for your web visitors. Are they coming from search engines, social media posts or clicking through from paid Google ads? Either way, you’d want to know how they’re coming to your site. If you have a large number of clickthroughs coming from social media or from organic searches, then your brand may be doing really well with resonating with your target audience. If you find that a lot of your traffic is from paid advertising, then this is good too. It means that as your brand grows, and more customers come into contact with your business, you’ll be able to generate more unpaid buzz.
Step 2: Check out your competitors
Who are the leaders in your industry? Consider what companies are comparable in size and have similar or competing products or services. You’ll want to check out what they’re doing on their website, what ads they may be running and what sources of web traffic they may be generating. Using online tools like Spyfu or Ahrefs to get an inside scoop into your competitor’s marketing engines can be a great way to figure out where you stack up. Once you have an idea of what your competitors are doing, see if you can incorporate the same strategies, if not make them better. Do you have a unique selling proposition that your competitors don’t? Do you offer more added benefits? Have a better customer service experience? Whatever your differentiating factor, use it to your advantage to outpace your competition.
Step 3: Go after the keywords
Building your brand equity is all about getting in front of your target audience. When any new company starts, they’re relatively unheard of. But, it’s the buzz about their product or services that spread like wildfires, until they’re on the brand equity level of a Google, Apple, or Amazon. The key is to get that constant exposure and have as many touch points on your target audience as possible. The easiest (and most affordable) way to do this is with keywords. Figure out what keywords are generating the most traffic and which less frequently used. Finding that sweet spot of low-usage keywords can be an effective way to quickly position your company on the first page of search engine results. The more times a customer sees your company’s name when they’re looking for a particular product or service, the higher your brand equity will soar. You want to weave these keywords in any content you produce whether it be blogs, press releases, white papers, web copy – you name it!
The key to really growing your business will ultimately come back to your brand and the level of brand equity you have within your industry. Nothing is set in stone and you have to always be willing to analyze, evaluate and recreate as needed to ensure that you’re in front of your customers as much as possible. If you’re not sure how well your website is helping you build up your brand equity, let us know. Our experienced brand management team at Snowball Creative Group would be happy to do a complete website assessment to determine what you can do now to better position your business. Contact us today for your complimentary consultation.
